


Sedition

by meltokio



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, with some bits of happiness sprinkled between
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltokio/pseuds/meltokio
Summary: A collection of drabbles and requests from an old RP blog of mine. Some of these drabbles were written over two years ago, so certain aspects of the canon may be incorrect due to recent updates from the author.





	1. Mercy - Gen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, no pairing, character death.

His body hits the ground with a sickening thud. She has come too late, only killing the titan after his death is inevitable. There is no way he can survive—not like this. A lost limb can be dealt with. Grievous wounds staunched and wrapped and sutured. How can you rebuild a person when so much is gone?

Her feet move of their own volition, her boots sticking to cobblestones thick with blood. She is desensitized by blood and death but she knows this corpse. She’s said his name. She’s heard the sound of his laugh and seen the crinkles in the corners of his eyes when he smiles. This is different. And it hurts.

Her eyes sting from smoke and something else. It’s been so long since she’s allowed herself to cry that the feeling is unfamiliar. She crouches, unsure of her own intent, and hears a rattling wheeze.

How is he still alive? Is this world so cruel?

“Marco—” This voice is too soft to be hers. Annie Leonhart growls and sneers and bites. She doesn’t whisper. She doesn’t comfort. She causes pain. She doesn’t ease it.

He looks at her but doesn’t see. “It hurts…” His voice is a rasped whisper, barely audible above the sounds of cracking timber around them.

The smell of blood is suddenly overwhelming and turns her stomach. In desperate futility she clamps her hands over the ruin of his neck but the blood flows unhindered between her fingers in weakening pulses.

There is something warm and wet on her cheeks, trailing clean lines down a face caked in dirt and sweat.

“It’s okay,” she lies quietly. “You’re gonna be okay.”

A short, choked inhale. “Annie…” His eyes find hers. “It hurts.”

She grits her teeth until they feel like breaking as her vision blurs. “I know.” Blood-slicked fingers leave his neck and wrap around the hilt of her sword.

His hand covers hers, cold and weak. “I’m glad…it’s you.”

She goes blind when her blade bites into his chest, seeking his heart. She hopes it doesn’t hurt anymore.

She removes his gear with numb hands and sets him gently against the wall.

“I’m sorry.”


	2. Victory - Ereani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern, college!verse.

He’d won the wager fair and square and had the decency to only ask a small favor for his victory prize. when Annie played Mario Kart with Reiner and Bertolt, they tended to require more than just a back rub—posting _‘Reiner is so cool’_ as her Facebook status every day for a week comes to mind.

So Annie obliges. Eren seems a little eager to take off his shirt and flings it across her room. He’s not as bulky as Reiner or as tall as Bertholdt, but he’s not tiny. Lean muscles ripple down his back as he flops unceremoniously onto her bed, face-first.

Annie pulls her hair up into its customary bun as she rolls her eyes. "So. Swedish or shiatsu?" She hears eren mumble something along the lines of ' _iunno_ ' muffled by her own pillow.

Annie knows little else of massage other than the fact that she’s required to touch him. And even _that_  isn’t so bad. It could be worse. Eren’s not unattractive. A little excitable, sure. But he’s been a good friend to her since they met. She wouldn’t have agreed to this level of intimacy if they weren’t somewhat close.

She straddles his waist, sitting on his butt before running her thumbs along the muscles against his shoulder blades. She’s mesmerized by the anatomy; the dips and crevasses. Pliant and solid. Bone and sinew and muscle. She’s momentarily distracted when Eren moves his arms under the pillow, his shoulders and biceps bulging in a way that makes her cheeks redden.

Suddenly this is a little more stressful than a favor between friends for a game well-played. If one of her roommates were to walk in, they certainly would draw obvious conclusions. Annie realizes that it doesn’t quite bother her. They wouldn’t even be necessarily wrong. She’s not sure what he thinks of her, but she’s sure she’s spent a few drunken nights lost in those teal blue eyes. And maybe his weekly visits for racing games didn’t necessarily have the most innocent of intentions.

There is only one way to find out.

Her resolve is fortified by the fact that Eren is the type of person to brush any affections off with a smile. He’d never humiliate her or make her feel stupid. He’d agree to remain friends and call it a secret between them.

Or he’d reciprocate. She hasn’t prepared for that outcome. She gives a mental shrug. It’s only a best case scenario.

Her fingers stop in their ministrations, instead following feather-light trails along his ribs to rest on either side of him. She lowers her face to his back, placing a timid kiss to the top of his vertebrae. The muscles of his back tighten, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t stop her. When she does it again, she can see the pulse in his neck quicken.

That’s a good sign.

She continues, leaving a kiss at every knot along his spine, until they both decide they’re bored with pretense.


	3. Grief - Reiani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, canon divergent.

They mourn very differently.

Reiner explodes, destroys everything he can get his hands on. He punches holes in walls until his knuckles are too ragged and split to heal properly.

Annie implodes. She feels everything and keeps it inside, bundled tight so he can’t see. He thinks she’s unaffected. It isn’t long until his harsh words are directed at her. Insults. Queries. Everything is loud and sudden and terrifying. It’s so much scarier when violence comes from a man prone to smiling more than frowning.

But he’s right. Bertolt had been the glue keeping them together. When he is no longer there, they fracture. The thought of being alone is more frightening than Reiner’s outbursts.

It’s quiet when she finds him on the floor in their cabin, wrapping his knuckles with dirty linen from his shirt. She can’t tell how much blood is his and how much is Bertolt’s, dark brown streaks on forest green.

When he looks up at her, his eyes are red-rimmed and shining with unshed tears. Annie is ashamed that hers are so dry in comparison. She kneels in front of him, moves slowly, as if approaching a scared and wounded animal (and she is, in a way.)

Annie doesn’t know what possesses her to take his hands in hers, heavy and calloused. They dwarf her own. Everything about him does. He’s strength to her agility. Noise to her silence. They’ve always been such opposites, with Bertolt bridging the gap. It pains her to think that now he’s gone, their connection is lost.

She brings his hands to her lips, kisses each bloodied knuckle. Her mouth quivers as sadness creeps into her throat, robbing her of air. The smallest sob escapes her, muffled by the cloth around his fingers. Here is her olive branch. She has been strong for too long.

Here is her surrender.


	4. Holy - Gen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, canon divergent.

She breathes in smoke and exhales only vengeance.

One thousand church bells toll in her head; each keening a death knell for someone crushed beneath her heel. There is no mercy left in her now. No pity. And why should there be? They had been young once, full of life and laughter. Now she is a child of winter—born from the ashes of dead cities. Burning with the indulgent anger of a bastard child.

They will sing songs of those she’s killed today. In the songs they will be heroes or martyrs, wreathed in golden laurels. They’ll sing no songs of her—that grotesque goddess come to purge their world of sin. Only hushed tales told when the sun dips below the horizon and the shadows grow long and perverse.

She rains fire on them all; scourges the corrupt and the vile clean of their trespasses. Allows them brave passage into the feast halls of the bloodied gods of old. It is a hero’s death she grants them, as their feeble bones crack between her fingers.

She is surrounded by the ghosts of burning buildings, breathing ash until the soot coats her lungs and makes them as black as her withered heart. A heart given no light and no heat and nowhere to grow so that it decayed before it was given a chance to blossom.

Wherever eyes like ice turn to look, they see fire. Embers covering the earth like fallen stars. The skin of the world blisters and cracks in the heat, sending up great groans and cries in protest.

Many had respected her, feared her. But no one had ever loved her. And today the world will weep for it.


	5. Dare - Maruani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, training days.

She could place the blame fully on Christa for this one. Annie doesn’t even hold a grudge against Ymir, who had suggested the stupid game and poked at Annie’s honor. It had been Christa who, in the goodness of her heart, had come to her rescue and placated Ymir’s jibes. Annie’s pride couldn’t allow such a thing, of course, so she begrudgingly left the sanctuary beneath her bedcovers and stomped, sullen as anything, into the boys’ cabin with the rest of the girls.

Now her eyes and throat sting. Smoke from tallow candles lit against the dark of a new moon fills the air as a bottle of pilfered liquor makes one and a half rounds in their haphazard circle. Connie is already flushed when he suggests a game he used to play in his home village. “King’s Orders”, he called it. Annie catches a glance from Reiner and shrugs. There weren’t many children in their village, nor had there been much time for games. Especially not the sort teenagers have to sneak out of bed after lights out to play.

Annie pulls her knees up to her chin, face half-buried in her sweater when Connie and his accomplice, Sasha, begin collecting the numbered sticks normally used for assigning chores. She watches, squinting, as Connie turns them all numbers-down and conceals them in his fist. One by one, each trainee gets up to retrieve a stick, until Connie’s hands were empty.

“Which one has the _‘FREE’_ stick?” he asks, to which Jean raises his lucky draw proudly in the air. “That means you get to make up a dare, using the numbers.”

Jean taps his chin once, twice, as if considering. “Number seven has to…kick number four.”

Annie silently watches Marco chuckle behind a freckled hand before checking his stick. His smile falls. She glances down to her own number. “It looks like I’ll be kicked.” Annie stands, giving Marco a meaningful look.

He holds up his stick in response, as if he can give it away to someone else. “I don’t want to kick Annie.”

Annie rolls up her sleeves and shrugs. “You won’t hurt me.”

His eyes go wider, standing and beseeching Connie, the master of this game. “I _really_ don’t want to kick Annie.”

Connie looks indignant. “Fine. If you don’t obey the king’s orders, you’ll have to do the punishment dare.” He turns to Jean. “You have to come up with something really bad for them to do instead.”

Jean grins, evil design blossoming behind his eyes. “If you won’t kick Annie, you have to kiss her.”

Annie’s eyes close momentarily, rolling behind her lids. She should have known, but the rest of the trainees should not have. They had been discreet, sneaking out only when they were sure everyone was asleep. Annie had been modest in her affections and Marco, having the social graces of a person to whom kindness comes easy, had restrained himself as well. To the untrained eye, they’d only appear as friends—or as close to friends as a person could get with Annie.

When Annie opens her eyes Marco is in front of her, scratching the back of his neck with an apologetic grin. She can nearly hear his thoughts, as if his expression projects  _It’s not so bad, huh?_  across the healthy space between them. To Annie’s discredit, she glances about the room. Ymir is whispering behind a dark hand to Christa, who giggles. Reiner seems positively chuffed at Annie’s discomfort while Bertolt assiduously tends to tearing loose threads from the hem of his shirt.

Annie bites her lip, avoiding Marco’s open-faced gaze.

“Guess you’re wishing he just kicked you, huh?” Connie says, _sotto voce_ , with an elbow in her ribs. She shoots him an icy glare before moving out of his reach and closer to the boy sharing center stage.

“Come on, Annie,” Jean says before looping an arm around Marco’s broader shoulders. “Marco’s not so bad. It’s not like I asked you to kiss Reiner.”

A baritone _"hey!"_  followed by a smattering of laughter makes its way around the room.

Marco lets out a half-hearted chuckle, disentangling himself from Jean and reaching for her hand, fingers barely brushing before he retreats. A silent, subtle note of encouragement. _It’s all right. I won’t let anything bad happen._

She releases a breath she’s been holding long enough to hear her heartbeat pounding furiously in her ears.

“Just kiss me already.” It’s half laugh, half plea, and it gives Annie the nerve to tug lightly on his shirt before meeting him on her tip-toes.

They’ve done this countless times, though never with an audience. The chorus of scandalized _‘oohs’_ makes her hands shake, but they’re soon covered by his warm palms. He squeezes slightly before breaking away with a flushed smile.

Connie is speechless and Jean looks proud.

The kids don’t dare anyone else to kiss.


	6. Compromise - Maruani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, training days.

She corners him after practice one day, as the sun slips down over the horizon. She is a small girl that casts a long shadow, and he sees her approach before she wants him to. He turns, smiles, and waves. So infuriatingly friendly. Something in her heart pinches and she lunges in one fluid motion, grabbing the lapels of his jacket and pinning him to the wall. Her eyes are pools of still water, but her teeth are bared.

He is compromising her mission with his kind eyes and easy smiles, the flowers, the tinge of rose in his cheeks when she accepts them graciously. He’s crippling her. Infiltrating her dreams, the one place she cannot control her emotions. It’s unacceptable.

Even smelling of sweat and covered in a thin layer of dust, he’s handsome. Features arranged to please the eye in ways Annie’s never were. He is soft while she is all angles and points. But he shows her kindnesses she’s never known. Subtle compliments and secret smiles. She wants to believe it’s only a farce, some game the boys play with girls who don’t quite look like Christa or Mikasa, but he’s not the type to give into petty cruelties.

She doesn’t know if it makes the situation better or worse.

"Annie— " Even her name sounds pretty on his tongue.

"Why?" she asks, full of confusion and vitriol.

"I don’t —"

She interrupts again, fingers tightening around the cloth of his jacket, "Why do you do these things?"

"Annie, I don’t know—" But realization blooms suddenly on his face. He smiles, lips pulling over white teeth. "Are you talking about the flowers?"

"Yes." The word is sharp, serrated in the acrid tones of her own voice.

He covers her hands with his own, gently pulling her fingers from his lapel, still smiling. When his work is done, he doesn’t release them. "Because I like you. I…thought it was obvious."

She stares at her own hands, tiny and pale compared to his, and her lips curl downward. Her heart is beating loud and fast enough that she’s sure he can hear it. A bead of sweat rolls down the back of her neck, making her shiver.

"You…like me too, right?" He tilts his head to get her to look at his face.

Her eyes are everywhere but on his, flicking from the ground to the wall as thoughts race through her head. Her experience with this sort of thing is severely lacking. She never had a childhood to speak of—a time to play at relationships and stumble through adulthood. All she knows of the workings of man and woman is from her parents. Hugs and kisses and sweet words.

Sweet words are not her strength. Physical contact is only acceptable when she’s fighting. But there is a way to communicate without speaking.

Wnthinking, she pulls her hands from his and they cup around the sides of his neck, pulling him down those few precious inches from his height to hers. His mouth is half-open in surprise so she captures his bottom lip at first. There are two terrifying moments when he doesn’t reciprocate, but soon enough his hands are at her waist and his lips are moving over hers. It’s chaste and stationary, the affections of children forced into adulthood too soon. But he’s warm and his breath smells of the peppermint plants that grow in the herb garden.

She opens her eyes only briefly, out of disbelief and caution, and counts five freckles on his nose before she closes them again.


	7. Slow - Reiani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, training days.

She’s enveloped in the words, idly tracing the illustrations with her finger as she searches for meaning in the extensive vocabulary. She blames her father for so much—curses his idealism and his severity—but she’s angrier still that he never thought to make her read. Literacy wasn’t important in the scheme of things. So long as she could fight, she never needed to search for answers between pages.

The book laid open on the table is some story about political intrigue and nobility. On the page opposite the opening lines of the chapter is a swirling sketch of a couple in finery twirling in some sort of dance. Further reading, illuminated by a single oil lamp, says it’s called a “waltz”.

She’s buried so deep in her book that she doesn’t hear heavy footfalls across the wooden floor.

“What are you reading?”

She nearly jumps out of her skin, slamming her knee on the underside of the heavy tabletop. She turns to find Reiner leaning over her book, peering onto the pages. From his easy demeanor, she can guess that this isn’t truly Reiner. Not the Reiner she left the village with, anyway. He’s the fractured mirror image of their leader—sunny smiles and kind words. There are no shadows behind this boy’s eyes. It scares her. It makes her uneasy. It makes her angry.

How dare he let himself fall apart when he was meant to lead them to victory?

Her nape prickles at the proximity. He’s all but a stranger now, looming over her with his hand on the back of her chair as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

As if he isn’t a murderer.

When she finds words, they’re muted and scratchy. “Nothing. Just some stupid book.”

A low chuckle rumbles in his broad chest. “Hey, hey. Relax. I’m not here to antagonize you—”

Her fist falls to the table, turning her head sharply to face him. “What are you here for?”

His face falls, as if he wasn’t expecting such a sour answer. Annie knows her demeanor is unpalatable to many. It’s only reasonable that this Reiner would be just as put off as any of the others.

To his credit, though, he regains his momentum and gives her a small smile. “I just wanted to say sorry for messing with you during training.” A self-deprecating huff of laughter as he scratches his jaw. “I definitely learned my lesson.”

“Good. Maybe you’ll leave me alone next time.” She drops her gaze back to her book, searching for the place she left off. “Exhuberance”…she remembers because she wondered what it meant.

Suddenly the words are moving and she’s left staring down at an empty space. She follows the motion to Reiner, who’s holding the book and squinting at the page. The legs of her chair scrape noisily against the floor as she shoots out of her seat, reaching—uselessly—for her book. It’s out of her grasp, in hoisted aloft above her head by a grinning fool wearing the face of a Warrior.

“Why are you—?”

“You must like dancing, huh, to read a book about it?” He peers at her with eyes narrowed in mischievous suspicion.

“You’re being an ass.”

“Scary Annie likes to dance, huh?”

“I’ll show you ‘scary’—”

Her fingers brush the leather binding before a hand covers them, lacing callused fingers with her own. She glances up in confusion as Reiner puts the book down on the table and wraps an arm around her waist.

Her first instinct is to kick his ankle; send him sprawling on his back yet again for his missteps. She resists. There’s something about this warmth that keeps her violence at bay.

“Dance with me,” he says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to hold onto a wild animal and make her stay. That sunshine smile is on every lilt and in the timbre of his voice.

Annie sighs, sadness beyond her years lacing through her teeth and past her lips. She wishes this were real for him. She wishes, more than anything, that she could share this rebirth. She wonders if her face would find smiles and laughter if she fractured. She wonders if she’d still be ‘Scary Annie’ or if she’d bask in the sunshine of naivety with the rest of them.

It’s difficult to remember a time when she didn’t know the taste of sacrifice.

Her forehead meets his chest. It is safe to show weakness here. Even if he doesn’t know it, they share a mutual affliction. “I don’t know how to dance.” A whisper like a confession. Perhaps Not-Annie would know a step or two, but Annie only knows how to fight.

The boy with Reiner’s face is quiet for a moment, probably dizzied by the fact that the girl who’d trounced him in combat is propped up against him like a fallen tree.

“Annie?” His tone has changed—light-hearted jocularity replaced by solemn concern. Annie knows without looking that his eyes are harder. She knows his brow is furrowed and the space between his eyebrows is creased in confusion. This is the Reiner she knows. This is her armored comrade in arms. It feels as if the sun’s hidden behind a cloud.

She pulls away, drawing her hand from his and mourning the cold absence. She offers no explanation and prays that he doesn’t ask for one.

Their mission is fraught enough with complication without adding this.

“Are you all right?” He steps forward, ever the noble captain. 

Annie doesn’t answer. She turns on her heel and retreats, leaving the book forgotten on the table.


	8. Chrysalis - Gen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon setting, future fic.

in her crystalline cocoon, she dreamed. abstract colors, shouts and screams and the acrid smell of blood. the taste of copper and steel. burning hair and tearing flesh. those weren’t even the worst of them. after her mind settled into deepest slumber, she dreamt of stories never played out. of a life never lived. of laughter and blushes and breathless declarations. she dreamt of smiling faces. reiner and his contagious laugh. bertolt and his shy grins. krista and ymir giggling behind their hands and sasha sneaking sweets into the girls’ cabin. she dreamt of clandestine nights with eren, teaching him how to disarm and to conquer. a subtle, unspoken rivalry with the girl whose only weakness was a boy. unwavering, blonde-haired, blue-eyed cleverness. cocky bravado thinly veiling crippling self-doubt. genuine, all-encompassing mercy and compassion. these were all people she considered friends. people who mystified and frightened her. liabilities. weaknesses. memories. shadows.

waking up had been the biggest mistake she’d ever made. she’d fallen, unwilling, from a shell into a trap. nights spent shivering in a cold, dark cell with nothing but her own painful thoughts to keep her company. sanity slowly slipping away until, just in time, someone opened the door. they had let her free. the mad scientist whose experiments had once threatened the fate of her home village. only they had shown annie mercy, despite the hatred in their eyes. they’d let her taste summer air and feel grass between her feet. they must have realized the once powerful warrior had been stripped of all conviction. emerging from her chrysalis only to walk into the hands of the enemy had made things clearer. her partners had been nowhere in sight. she had been left utterly alone. completely forgotten. no one was coming to her rescue.

she is equal parts disgusted and proud of the damage she’s done. this cruel world had given her nothing. no kindness, no gifts, not even beauty. it had never shown her love outside of her mother’s warm embrace. it had never given her reason to be grateful, so why should she make any excuse for the enjoyment she derived from bloody battle? her life had been cold, and so had she become. a statue carved of ice, as unforgiving as winter and just as beloved. she was the frigid air that destroyed crops. the sheets of ice that fell on homes and starved families within. she is the creeping memento of mortality that steals joy from the room. a grim reminder that death waits for all.

her captor says her name. family first, then identification. annie. who had ever feared a girl named annie? annie is not a warrior. annie is a girl who herds sheep or bakes bread. but it is her father’s name that she loves. leonhart. it invokes the image of lions, regal and proud and deadly.

if annie was parsimonious before, she is utterly mute now. what is there to say? words are nothing, born on lips chapped and peeling from lack of food and water. her voice is weak compared to the booming roar of her titan. she’s just a girl now, too lost in a forest of her own making to even summon the hellish creature that bears her eyes and her hair.

annie’s only solace comes in staring out at the expanse before her. wishing she’d grow wings and fly over the sea to the place where her village believed the souls of the dead spent eternity in paradise. death would only be sweet release for her now. a chance for dreamless sleep.

all at once she remembers her mother’s tale of the princess cast into deep slumber only to be awakened by true love’s first kiss. it’s laughable to think of a comparison. annie had been pulled from sleep by the people she’d tried to kill. no prince had come to whisk her off to his castle. there was no white horse and no sunset. just the broken shards of her organic shell and taste of her own defeat.


End file.
